Financial perks are the highest draw of journey loyalty, however they don’t create stickiness

Dive Brief:

• Two in 5 energetic vacationers say they treat travel loyalty programs as monetary optimization instruments, in accordance with a survey launched Tuesday by iSeatz, a journey and life-style loyalty platform. That share rises to almost 45% amongst Gen Z and millennials.
• Nearly one-third of vacationers say most monetary worth is their precedence in journey loyalty packages, in accordance with the survey of two,000 U.S. customers.
• If loyalty packages disappeared, greater than half of vacationers — 56% — say they might shift to prioritizing value and comfort over model affinity.

Dive Insight:

Customers’ curiosity in loyalty reductions isn’t distinctive to the journey business, however loyalty packages can’t win on monetary advantages alone. However, they’re nonetheless highly effective when supplied alongside different causes to stay with the model.

Consumers’ high causes to hitch a loyalty program are rewards or advantages tied to a present buy and particular reductions for members, in accordance with a survey of 1,500 U.S. customers launched earlier this yr by EY. These causes held the highest spot within the 2025 research as effectively.

Discounts present a powerful incentive, however they make for a poor loyalty differentiator, in accordance with Patricia Camden, loyalty chief for EY Americas.

“One important consideration is that a program built purely on price is very hard to defend,” Camden stated in an e mail. “The moment a competitor decides to discount a little more, your member is now their customer. If the only reason someone chose your brand was a coupon, another coupon can move them somewhere else just as easily.”

The iSeatz survey discovered the same sentiment, with 2 in 5 vacationers saying they see themselves as strategic loyalty customers who optimize rewards throughout a number of packages to maximise the return.

Financial perks can nonetheless function a powerful core for a loyalty program if they’ve extras to again them up, in accordance with Camden. Some of probably the most profitable loyalty fashions on the planet are constructed on worth. What units them aside is that they again up their discount-focused program with a mixture of expertise and comfort that’s exhausting for different manufacturers to copy. 

“The most successful brands use price as the door opener and then work quickly to build a second reason to stay,” Camden stated.

Loyalty packages aiming to win over prospects could wish to concentrate on ease of use. While prospects usually say they need flexibility, a small number of clearly helpful rewards could make prospects really feel like they’re getting good worth whereas constructing long-term relationships.

Friction is a major problem for journey loyalty, iSeatz discovered. Nearly three-quarters of vacationers say they’ve tried to redeem a reward and failed at the least as soon as, and half of vacationers say loyalty redemption takes extra effort than it ought to. 

The most typical limitations to redemption have been availability points, inadequate factors or belonging to the unsuitable standing tier, a redemption course of too complicated to finish, and a portal that didn’t work, in accordance with iSeatz.